law firm

Legal Marketing At The End Of The Honeymoon

March 12, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Your online legal marketing plans have taken shape, and you’re serious about generating new business for your law firm. You haven’t abandoned your offline marketing but you’re looking at those media like distasteful relatives you are required to invite to your home for holidays.

Your law firm blog is all shiny and new, the pictures beautiful and the designer paid. You’ve got your Facebook fan page, Twitter account, whatever you’ve decided to work with. Your legal marketing efforts are all ready to go.

Welcome the the online legal marketing honeymoon, when it’s all wine and roses, romantic sunset walks along the beach and passion.

You start off easy, with a blog post about the basics. You get so excited it takes you 900 words to describe the most mundane subject, but that’s OK – you want to be thorough, right?

Of course, it’s dry and boring to the outsider. But it really showcases your knowledge of the field, sets you apart from the rest of the competition. That’s what legal marketing is all about, right? Full steam ahead!

The next day you go onto Twitter and follow everyone and their mother, all in a mad rush to beat Ashton Kutcher and Oprah in numbers of followers. The more people you follow, the more will follow you back!

You have no idea who these people are, or why they would want to follow you. But they sure to use Twitter a lot! Your Twitter stream gets clogged up within seconds, but you send out a link to your brand new blog post and know – just KNOW – it will send your traffic skyrocketing.

Of course, next up is Facebook. Two bazillion users, and they are all pining for your wisdom. You set up your fan page, so you send out a suggestion to all of your Facebook friends that they become fans. You send out your blog posts there, too.

You are a legal marketing Goliath. Market domination is within reach. You can sense your competition trembling in their offices, fearful of your wrath and legal marketing prowess.

Now, check your website analytics. Re-check them. Keep checking. Where’s that rush of traffic?

The online legal marketing honeymoon is over. And as with all long-term relationships, the hard work begins.

Your spouse doesn’t bring you flowers anymore (cue the song, please). No more all-nighters filled with insights into one another. It’s time to start figuring out who’s going to load the dishwasher at night.

So, too, with your online legal marketing efforts. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you aren’t going to be an overnight success. Nobody is. It takes hard work, nose to the grindstone, day in and day out.

And even worse is the fact that it never ends.

You have a blog but need to feed the machine. Forever.

You are on Twitter, but if you don’t interact and reach out to new people then it’s nothing more than another broadcast mechanism.

Facebook is bigger than ever, but if you’re there and don’t work on your presence then you might as well go home.

Because the competition is waking up, and doing it faster than you realize. Lawyers are hitting Avvo hard, learning the Facebook ropes, and embracing blogging like never before.

Maybe you’ve never heard of them, maybe their legal marketing efforts aren’t on your radar yet because you’ve got your nose buried.

It doesn’t matter. They’re out there. And your competition isn’t just spending money on some company that claims they’ll get you on the first page of Google (not that it matters even if they could – if you’ve not nothing to add to the conversation then nobody’s going to stick around your site for long).

So stop asking how long you’ve got to keep at this marketing and content creation thing. Forget about when you can start going to sleep early and sleeping late again. It isn’t going to happen – not now, not ever.

You signed up for this, after all. You decided that you wanted to run your own law firm, to be the master (or mistress) of your own domain, to eat what you kill.

But ask anyone who’s been married for 50 years if the hard work has been worth it. Most will say it was some of the most rewarding work they’ve ever done.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: blog, facebook, law firm, Legal Marketing, offline marketing, online legal marketing, online social networking, social media, Twitter, world wide web

Blogging For Your Law Firm? There Is No Middle Ground.

March 11, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Marketing your law firm with a blog is a romantic notion in a certain sense.

Law firm marketing folks – heck, all marketing folks – extol the virtues of blogging. Create a law firm blog and your business will soar, setting you apart from the competition and bringing you accolades of all sorts. Your law firm marketing efforts should center around a blog, they say.

Actually, that’s not true. Creating a law firm blog as part of your marketing efforts will set you apart from the competition, but maybe not in a good way.

Blogging is a content marketing mechanism that’s designed to provide useful information and show your stuff. By creating a law firm blog you build trust your prospective clients and the public, enhancing your reputation. It’s also terrific for search engine optimization, which exposes your words and thoughts to a wider audience and increases the reach of your message.

But unless you’re adding content on a regular basis, you’re not going to look so terrific to people to visit your law firm blog.

I’m not telling you to create content every day because I know it’s not realistic for lawyers to take that kind of time. But would it kill you to put down something on your law firm blog once a week, something valuable and helpful?

There’s a lawyer in my area who, in a fit of “I want to market my law firm,” went out and hired a designer to do two new sites for his bankruptcy law firm. The sites are beautiful, and very easily navigable. And they both have blogs.

OK, I can see someone creating more than one law firm blog – in fact, I have more than one. The problem is that both of the blogs cover exactly the same topic, with the only difference that one site allegedly covers New York City and the other covers Long Island (a distance of under 60 miles).

Since he launched these beautiful sites over six months ago, he’s suffered from a bit of over extension.

On one blog he’s done 10 posts since September 2009, which is respectable.

On the second blog he’s done 2 posts since September 2009. And one of them is a duplicate of a post on the first site.

A failure of consistency tells a visitor that you’re not serious. And if you’re not serious about this aspect of your marketing, how reliable are you as a service provider? Your law firm blog signals a commitment to provide information and share knowledge; your lack of consistency signals a failure to live up to that commitment.

In addition, failing to consistently publish content onto your legal blog will lower your site traffic. If there’s a blog I like, I’m going to visit it more frequently (as much as I love it, I recognize that RSS readers never really caught on with the masses). Once I show up a few times and see nothing new, I’m not visiting anymore. It’s like when I turn on the television every week to catch Big Bang Theory (which you should watch), I expect to see Sheldon in a new episode. If all I get is repeats for a few weeks I’m going to find something else to do on Mondays nights.

So, too, with your legal blogging activities. If you’re going to do it, understand that you’re in this for the long haul. If you’re in that’s cool. And if not, you need to go find some other way to market your law firm.

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, computing, content marketing, internet, law, law firm, law firm blog, law firm marketing, Legal Marketing, marketing, marketing your law firm, Search Engine Optimization, social information processing, technology

Legal Marketing Tip: A Flip Camera And 8.3 Seconds

March 10, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Legal marketing takes all forms, but one of the best ways to convince the world that you’re good at what you do is to get other people talking about you.

Word of mouth is indeed a powerful force, especially these days. There are so many lawyers out there, so many marketing messages thrown at consumers, that it’s difficult to separate the good from the bad.

When someone tells the world about your law firm, those words carry weight. They infused with what’s called social proof, that undercurrent of, “it was good for me, so it will be good for you, too.“

Your legal marketing message needs to answer that unspoken question of, “can I trust that you’re a good lawyer who will take care of me?”

Testimonials are powerful ways to get that word of mouth going. And one of the best places to get those testimonials is when the relief is fresh in the client’s mind.

This morning I took my Flip video camera with me to bankruptcy court. On the way out, one client told me that he thought we were terrific.

So I asked him if he’d be willing to say that on camera. He agreed, and I pulled out my little video camera.

He took 8.3 seconds to say what was on his mind and to share his positive feelings about the firm.

The result? A priceless piece of legal marketing that is better than anything we could have said ourselves. I paid not a single dime for it, and all I had to do was ask a happy client if he’d be willing to say a kind word on video.

Remember that a happy client is not only a direct referral source, but a potential evangelist. And every person they send your way is someone you don’t need to convince that you’re good at what you do.

Don’t believe me? Ask Gustavo.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: bankruptcy courts, cameras, flip cameras, law firm, lawyers, Legal Marketing, people talking

How Content Drives Law Firm Marketing

March 9, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Law firm marketing used to be so simple. Slap up a few ads, buy up some television time, and call the Yellow Pages representative to pick up a fat check.

But somewhere along the line it got more difficult. Prospective clients started wising up and asking questions. They realized that there was no early way for them to differentiate between Lawyer A and Lawyer B based on a 30 second commercial spot or a full-page Yellow Pages ad. The problem was that they didn’t know exactly how to tell the difference.

So they did what we all do when we shop for a new car – we peek under the hood.

First they turned to the Better Business Bureau, not realizing that lawyers didn’t utilize that venue. So they moved onto Martindale-Hubbell, the grand-daddy of lawyer rankings. But M-H was stuffed to the gills with huge law firms that looked down on helping people with their problems in favor of billing big corporate entities.

Some lucky few could ask their friends and family members about lawyers, but when it came to things like bankruptcy and divorce it was a little stickier. Who wants to approach their uncle and say, “Hi Uncle Bob. I can’t pay my bills. Do you know a good bankruptcy lawyer?”

So they turned to the Internet. At first there was no way to find a reputable professional, so the public just bumped around in the dark. But eventually lawyers started getting websites, those online brochures with pretty pictures. Lulled into peaceful slumber, people started equating the best website with the best lawyer.

But something happened along the way. Blogging came around, and some folks started thinking that it was a darn easy way to add information to their website. It sure was a lot faster and cheaper than paying the web guru to update the site every month.

Blogging didn’t take off for lawyers for a long time. In fact, there’s a good argument that blogging still hasn’t taken off for lawyers. But with blogging evangelists like Grant Griffiths leading the way, inroads have been made over the past few years.

When you’re talking about blogging, you’re talking about the entire world of online marketing. Every industry has marching orders to get blogging and get it done now. Every media channel has a cadre of super-successful people who also happen to be blogging their brains out. You can’t get away from it.

Consumers have been trained to ask questions online, to query Google and Bing and the rest in an effort to get answers. The answers to their questions float to the top of the search engine results page and, in so doing, the site on which those answers reside gain the most loyal followings.

Follow someone long enough and you come to trust their intellect and insight. You rely upon them for good information. You get to know them to an extent, and feel closer to them. And when you need help, you turn to that person over all others.

Chances are pretty good that you’re not creating content and, in fact, don’t know where you’d put it or what you should do to get people to notice it. If so, you’re not alone. In fact, most of your competition isn’t doing anything either. They’re watching the world pass them by, caught up in the day-to-day grind of being lawyer and entranced by the notion of cutting a fat check to some “SEO Mastermind” to turn their 3-page website into a Google magnet.

Good luck with that.

So here’s what you need to do, right now. Take out a pen and a blank legal pad and start writing. Anything at all.

We’re going to keep talking about this. Because your future depends on it.

Photo courtesy of SPazzo_1493.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, internet, law, law firm, law firm marketing, lawyer, lawyers, martindale hubbell, new cars, social information processing, technology, yellow page ads, Yellow Pages

Online Legal Marketing 101 – Be Original

March 1, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

When marketing your law firm online it’s important to remember that originality is key. And I’m not just talking about the design of your law firm’s website or your point of view – it should be obvious that you need to be different so as not to blend in.

What I’m talking about is the originality of your online content. The words you use, the way you put your thoughts together, and the way it all reads. It’s all got to be original or your online legal marketing efforts will fail. And not because they won’t resonate, but because they won’t be seen.

Case in point, with names changed to protect the innocent. A colleague of mine is a bankruptcy lawyer who relies almost solely on his online legal marketing efforts to keep his doors open. He’s a good lawyer, a good guy, and smart. But he got a little careless when he built his current website.

His law firm’s website is gorgeous, filled with video and lots of pages of content. He’s got his picture up on the site, his contact information, and all the bells and whistles that we want to have in place when marketing online. Reads well, designed well … but all was not well.

His site was placed at the top of every single relevant search term for quite some time. Until one day he noticed it wasn’t there anymore. Like, at all. Gone from Local Search, gone from the index … poof. Even his Google Profile was deactivated and blocked.

So he did what I would have done. He freaked out. Sent emails, called his web host, tried in vain to contact Google’s search team. He got back cryptic emails, all essentially telling him that his law firm’s website was somehow a bad apple.

Finally, his SEO people started digging around and were told of the problem. His website was filled with content found elsewhere online, on sites for his law firm as well as on sites for other lawyers.

In other words, his site was unoriginal. And that was a problem for two reasons:

First, Google has been clear that duplicate content isn’t the best way to go. Duplicate content is defined as:

substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

In fact, the Google Webmaster Blog says:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

What does it mean to be deceptive and manipulative? Well, that’s tough to say. But if your site is so clearly filled with content that’s found elsewhere, the chances are good that Google’s going to find that your intentions are less than honorable.

Why does Google hate duplicate content? Because Google’s primary business is to delivery the best possible search results; in doing so, it ensures that people will come back to Google again and again when they want to find something. If the search engine lists a ton of different sites with the exact same information, where’s the value add for the searcher? It isn’t there at all, which is why the search engine will cull out the duplicates and show only a single instance of the content – and that single instance will be on the domain that has the highest PageRank, relevance and trust scores overall.

Second, duplicate content isn’t worth your reader’s efforts and time. Let’s say I can pick up the exact same book in a bunch of different libraries. Why would I look to one as a better library than the others? I wouldn’t – unless one particular library has a bunch of different books on the same subject. In that case, one is better than the others.

So, too, with your web content. Your law firm website needs to have something relevant and unique to say, something that sets it apart in the eyes of the visitor in order to spur that person to take action.

How do you avoid the duplicate content problem in your online legal marketing efforts? Speak in your own words, as if you were talking with a client or prospect. Be genuine, be honest, and be yourself. If you’ve got any passion for what you do, this will come through easily. That’s it. No magic potion.

And if you’ve hired someone to develop your website copy, take the time and a few bucks to run it through Copyscape. That’s a service that will go through a web page’s content and ensure that it’s not a duplicate of another site. Well worth the money.

Photo courtesy of SpiritMama.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: bankruptcy lawyers, content, copyscape, duplicate content, law firm, marketing online, online content, online legal marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engines

Legal Marketing – Wash, Rinse, Repeat

February 22, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Legal marketing efforts are important – we all know it. We need to keep the new business (and repeat business) flowing in the front door in order to keep the coffers full, the staff busy, and the lights on.

We learn everything we can, we soak up information, we read as much as possible. And in so doing, we think that our legal marketing efforts are going to take off.

It ain’t necessarily so, as they song goes.

Education doesn’t transform into results without action. That action needs to be yours, and opening your wallet for education or a legal marketing consultant doesn’t count.

But here’s something the legal marketing gurus won’t tell you – half the time, you’re going to be wrong when you do something.

In my own bankruptcy practice, my efforts as marketing my law firm have failed just as often as not. In 1997 I did a ton of direct mail and lost my shirt. Then in 1999 I paid a big-name web design company a bunch of money and thought a slick website would be the panacea I sought – it wasn’t. I blew a chunk on television only to see no ROI whatsoever.

But I learned from my mistakes, changed my tactics, and made each of these areas work for my law practice.

The point is that I tried. I took the risks, I failed. Then I learned. But I would never have learned had I not tried and failed the first time out.

Your website will suck. Your direct mail piece will bomb. Your news release won’t be optimized so it will disappear into a black hole. Your Twitter account will languish in obscurity.

And that sucks. Sucks your money down the train, sucks your time there as well.

But if you don’t try something, you can never succeed. You can never really learn what will and what will not work for you unless you give something a shot.

You can pay all the money in the world to a legal marketing consultant. You can pick up a bunch of courses. You can listen all you want, taking good notes all the way. But unless you take something and give it a shot, you’re out of the game.

Twitter? Facebook? Blogging? Podcasting? It’s all pretty much free, and it’s well known that you’re not going to be able to break the Internet. So why not give it a whirl?

Pick one thing. Dive in. Make mistakes. Fix them.

Rinse and repeat.

Photo courtesy of icathing.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: law firm, Legal Marketing, marketing, marketing guru, marketing your law firm, repeat business

Remodeling The Bankruptcy Law Practice

January 19, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Managing a bankruptcy practice is hard work. You’re working with clients, bringing in new business, and doing the heavy lifting. Starting a bankruptcy practice is also difficult, and for different reasons. But what if you need to start a bankruptcy practice while managing the existing one? In other word, re-creating a law firm from within?

I’m in the process of arranging to have some work done in my apartment. We moved in about 12 years ago at a time when we really had no business getting a mortgage in the first place. With little money behind us and just starting out, my wife (then girlfriend) and I opted to take the place as-is. And though it was decent enough at the time, the years have taken their toll on our corner of the world.

Specifically, the wood floors need to be re-done. 12 years and a dog have conspired against out (once) lovely floor. Now it looks like something out of a haunted house. No choice, we need to get the floors sanded and polished.

Suddenly our lives are turned inside out. Boxes to be packed, stuff to be moved around, dust curtains to be installed.

But life will go on. It will be inconvenient but we know that once it’s all done we won’t have to worry about dodging splinters when we walk through the living room.

I always talk about new marketing and practice management ideas for the law firm; most of it comes from running a profitable bankruptcy law firm, which is my perspective as a consumer bankruptcy lawyer. But how do you implement new ideas and strategies without destroying what may otherwise be a fully-functioning practice?

It’s a question I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. After all, most bankruptcy lawyers are solos or in small firms and don’t have the luxury of ripping out half the practice at a time and leaving the rest undisturbed. If you’re shutting down, you’re done. With the transactional nature of consumer bankruptcy work, that’s not an option.

Change needs to come in small bits and pieces, not all at once. Want to go to an electronic faxing method, scrapping the fax machine entirely? Open the new account with MaxEMail (my preferred vendor), eFax, or whatever service you choose. Test it out for a week by forwarding your existing fax number. Then, after you’ve made sure it works, you can start giving out the new number to clients. Keep the old one forwarding for a year; then you can disconnect it.

Employees taking too much time off? Need new policies? Draft up the manual and pass it around for review and comments. Let it sink in for a few weeks. Then, after you’ve made sure everyone’s seen it, announce an effective date a month int the future. Announce the date and send out periodic emails to staffers to remind them.

Thinking about a virtual assistant to help with the bankruptcy petition drafting? Find someone you like, train them and give them one petition. Just one. Review it, file it, and then give them a second to handle. Don’t fire your existing paralegal until the virtual assistant has done enough for you to know that he or she is reliable and capable.

See, it’s all a question of transition. If you make these enormous and jarring changes they’re bound to backfire on you. You don’t need to move out of the house to get the floors refinished, you can do it room by room. It takes more time to get done, but you won’t need to worry about being homeless. The rest of the house will continue to chug along even while the work continues.